For its last triple bill of the season, the Royal Ballet's centenary tribute to Frederick Ashton frames his glorious Symphonic Variations with two house-party ballets: Les Biches, created by his mentor, Bronislava Nijinska in 1924, and his own A Month in the Country, from 1975.

Nijinska set her social gathering on the Riviera, where giggly girls with plumes and pearls cavort with a trio of beach boys. The feather-brained debs might be filles de joie in a brothel run by a wordly madame - Darcey Bussell, rather too nice to be naughty.

The end of a phenomenon is near. Sylvie Guillem's prime-time career with the Royal Ballet is in its last handful of performances, and, for all her maverick reputation, Guillem's Ashton performances qualify her as one of the most riveting of his interpreters.

The final programme in the Royal Ballet’s brilliant Ashton centenary season is a real humdinger. Ashton revered Bronislava Nijinska as his greatest choreographic influence, and in 1964, when he directed the Covent Garden company, he persuaded her to revive her delicious Les Biches, created 40 years earlier for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

With Poulenc’s ebullient music and Marie Laurencin’s pretty pastel designs, this gorgeously observed comedy of the social and sexual manners of the 1920s looks as fresh as new on its latest return to open the triple bill.

Les Biches/Symphonic Variations/A Month in the CountryBy Gavin Roebuck for The Stage

Nijinska staged this definitive version of her 1924 Les Biches with the company in 1964. Francis Poulenc’s score evokes the jazz influence of the era. In the setting of a privileged house party the ballet portrays the pleasure-seeking of both the satirical, sophisticated and the naive of the twenties social set.

Leanne Benjamin displays a gorgeous sense of line but was perhaps not quite on top form on the opening night. The three men Martin Harvey, Bennet Gartside and Thomas Whitehead are disappointing and untidy in their performance. Darcey Bussell subtly captures her role as the pearl-twirling hostess with the long cigarette holder.

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